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“Therefore let all the faithful pray to You while You may be found; surely the rising of the mighty waters will not reach them. You are my hiding place; You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance,” (Psalm 32:6-7).

Friends, if it seems like I am writing a lot about the Rapture lately, it’s only because God keeps bringing the Rapture to my mind. Honestly, I can only think of one reason why He would do that: because the time is short. I was surprised by this verse because I’ve read through the Psalms many, many times, but I don’t remember ever reading anything in there about the Rapture.

Pray to God while He may be found! In the midst of the post-Rapture chaos it is going to be difficult to calm your heart and pray, and even more difficult to hear His voice. The antichrist will arrive on the world scene with powerful demonic deception. He is already in the world today, and already very well-known among the world’s decision-makers. He’s ready to step in and “solve” the world’s problems and restore order. [I’m not going to name any names here, but with a little research, you can discover the one man in the whole world who fits all the prophecies.] The Catholic Church is probably going to tell people that there has been a mass abduction by aliens. And the antichrist is probably going to claim to be Jesus, the mahdi (Muslim messiah), and an alien.

I know! It sounds like science fiction! It is surreal just to be writing this. But when you see all this happen, remember where you read it and when.

Pray to God while He may be found. But what should we be praying? Jesus told us what to pray:

Then He spoke to them a parable: “Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. When they are already budding, you see and know for yourselves that summer is now near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near. Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away. But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man,” (Luke 21:29-36 NKJV, emphasis mine).

We should be praying that we may be counted worthy to escape the Tribulation. It’s going to get really ugly. Christians will be beheaded for their faith. And many will take the Mark of the Beast out of cowardice (see The Damned Cowards!). Are you ready to have your head cut off for your faith?

Besides praying, we should be diligently doing the work that God has given us to do. God has given each of us a task to do for the Kingdom. If you’re too busy to do the work that God has given you, then you’re too busy. I’ll bet you’re never too busy to watch TV, check Facebook, or play computer games. Keeping you busy is one way that the enemy keeps you ineffective as a Christian. He will sometimes have you do a whole lot of “Christian” work in order to keep you from doing that one thing that God has called you to do. Often we agree to do things to which we are not called just because we don’t know how to say no. Go over your calendar with God, and ask Him what things you need to quit doing. Then have the courage to quit those things. People will complain. They will say that you’re letting them down. They will try to put a big guilt trip on you. I know because I did this. It’s really hard. You might lose some friends. But keep in mind that it’s more important to be faithful to God.

Keep your eyes on the prize! Remember that it’s not your works that save you, but laziness could cost you your head. Stay focused! Pray to God while He can still be found. And never forget: God is good!

But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death, (Revelation 21:8, emphasis mine).

The first few times that I read Revelation 21:8, it just didn’t sink in. Take a good look at who leads the list of people that are destined for hell: cowards! When it finally dawned on me that cowards are going to hell (along with murderers, idolaters, liars, and the rest of the nasty crew), I wondered why. After all, aren’t they already scared?

Then the Lord reminded me that courage is not about not having fear. Courage is facing down the fear and triumphing over it. Courage is not allowing fear to stop you when you know what you should do.

Courage is something I see every day in the missionaries and pastors of Europe. While the rest of the world treats them as irrelevant, these brave men and women—and whole families, even!—take their faith to the nations. Many of them have sold all their possessions to enter into the mission field. Some have suffered hardships that have cost them dearly: health, marriages, and family death.

The cowardly are the ones who go to church, but don’t obey when God calls them to ministry. In their amazing book, Experiencing God, Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King wrote that God invites you to join Him in work that He’s already doing, and that God’s invitation leads to a crisis of belief. Joining God in His work requires major adjustments in your life. But the thing that was hardest for me when I was working my way through Experiencing God was the chapter titled “Joining God Requires Obedience,” and especially the section titled “The Cost of Obedience.”

I was fine with obedience costing me, personally, but when I got to the subsection titled “Cost to my Family for me to do God’s Will,” it stopped me cold. This was 1997, and I was a housewife and stay-at-home mom. My family was more important to me than anything else on earth. How could I ask my family to suffer and sacrifice for my answer to God’s call on my life? Of course, at the time, I didn’t know what God’s call on my life was. And if I hadn’t counted the cost—including the cost to my family—I might never have known. God might have deemed me unsuitable for service if I had chosen my family over serving Him.

Baby Steps

God took me along in baby steps. I didn’t jump into missionary service right then. Later in the book, it asks the question: What work is God inviting you to join Him in? When I prayed about that question, I remembered that I had been asked by another mother to help put together a children’s church program. The church had been through a very bitter split just before I moved there, and the children’s program was a casualty. So Sunday mornings consisted of great music, great teaching and preaching, but absolutely nothing for the children. While the adults enjoyed the sermon, the children all around me colored pictures, ate candy, and went out to the bathroom with a frequency that far exceeded the needs of even the tiniest bladder. So I called this woman and we met to pray and plan for putting together a children’s church program. We had so much fun, both with each other and with our own children, that really the hardest part of all had been making that initial phone call. That phone call had taken courage.

One day as I was showering I had an idea for a children’s program. I was living in New England at the time, and there the kids had a week off from school, usually in February, and it was called Winter Break. Many times, winter break put a strain on working parents, who then had to scramble to find someone to watch the kids while they work. If they didn’t find someone, they simply had to take time off work for that week. My idea was a one day Winter Carnival at which the kids could play games, win prizes, and learn about Jesus in a fun atmosphere. My immediate reaction was “What a fantastic idea!” and on the heels of that thought was resistance because it was going to be a huge task to put it together in just a month’s time.

Having recently been through Experiencing God, I knew that an idea that great for sharing the Gospel together with my feeling of resistance meant that this was really God’s idea. So I called the pastor and told him the idea. He loved it, and told the elders about the idea. They also loved it. Before I knew it, people were calling and volunteering time, volunteering resources, and volunteering to help. In the end, I had only a small part to do in planning, most of the set up, implementation, and clean up was done by others. I had so many volunteers and so many resources that in the end, I couldn’t take any credit for any of it. The biggest thing I did was call the pastor with the idea that God had given me. And all that the phone call took was courage.

I knew at the time that children’s church was a temporary call, but I had no idea that God had a much bigger call on my life. Two years after Experiencing God, and having Him change my life through service in children’s church, I got the big call. But even the big call happened in small steps for me. That story is too long to place here, but it is recounted in detail in my book, Laughing in My Dreams.

The point is that as I showed myself to be faithful in smaller things, God gave me bigger things. The biggest obstacle to overcome was my own resistance. That’s not to say that there wasn’t resistance and obstacles from other quarters. There was. But once I made my mind up, it was easy to overcome those things.

When I moved back to Italy as a missionary, I had a strong call of God upon my life, and my own determination to follow that call. People on both continents told me that I am a very brave woman to have moved to Italy alone. At first I thought that they just didn’t know how scared I am at times. But then I realized that courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is going ahead despite the fear. And you know what I learned? Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” What I learned in facing down fear is that fear flees when faced with determined action.

As many of my readers know, the End Times is on my mind a lot lately. In reading Revelation 21:8 again, I realized that there will be a lot of people who take the Mark of the Beast, knowing that the Bible says not to. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Antichrist made that mark the number 666, just to snub his nose at God. I have heard that several non-believers are reluctant to take a microchip into their hand because they recognize that it sounds like what Christians say will happen. Those people who take the Mark knowing that they shouldn’t, will do so because they don’t want to be beheaded. They are cowards. They will end up in the Lake of Fire because they chose temporal comfort over eternal security. And really, the only reason why they would do that is because they just don’t love God.

Don’t be cowardly! Stand up for your beliefs. We will overcome by the Blood of the Lamb and by the Word of our Testimony. And never forget: God is good! He will give you the strength and the joy to go through whatever you must go through. Yes, joy! The joy of the Lord is your strength.

As I wrote in The Scars of Communism (https://europeanfaithmissions.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/the-scars-of-communism/), just before coming on this trip to Hungary and Romania, I opened the box of books that I had gotten out of storage after a year, and the book at the very top was “Tortured for Christ” by Richard Wurmbrand. The things suffered by Pastor Wurmbrand and the rest of the Underground Church really moved me. After all, I could have been born in a Communist country, and had to suffer for my faith, too.

Today there was a conference for the seniors of the church, at which Pastor H. Koraćs Gėza spoke. I was told that I would have about five minutes to speak to them. So of course I prayed about it, and here’s what I said:

Looking out here at all the gray hair, I am aware that many of you and your parents kept your faith in Christ under the oppressive rule of the atheistic Communists. I have two things to say to you: First, I am deeply sorry that my country believed the lies of the Communists and did nothing to help you. Secondly, I know that someday you will trade your silver crowns for gold crowns. I am here to honor you for your faithful service to your Lord and mine.

To the young people here I say: learn from these elders, and share the love of Christ with everyone you know.

And finally, I would like to thank Pastor Gėza for coming. It is an honor to meet you.

When Pastor Gėza returned to the platform, he observed that Christianity had actually flourished and grown under Communist oppression. He said that Christianity now faces a far more dangerous enemy in the form of complacency. I believe he’s right.

It is the danger of complacency in Eastern Europe is that it is following the same pattern that makes Western Europe such a difficult mission field. Complacency has caused Western Europe to evolve from nominal Christianity through religious disconnection, cynicism, and xenophobia to become the secular, materialistic, humanistic, hedonistic, nihilistic, hopeless, suicidal people they’ve become, seeking answers in drugs and alcohol, Eastern Philosophies, Witchcraft, and Satanism. Is it any wonder that abortion and human trafficking thrives in such an environment? In Switzerland it is now possible to request physician-assisted suicide without any physical illness.

The most frightening thing of all is that the United States is following the unfortunate pattern of Europe.

What does complacency look like? Complacency looks like Christianity, but lacks the power of the Holy Spirit, or as the Apostle Paul put it: “having a form of godliness but denying its power,” (2 Timothy 3:5). Complacency seeks answers and help through human means instead of looking to God as the Source of all things. Complacency seeks its own comfort instead of God’s way.

When Jesus says, “Follow Me” Complacency answers, “But the food there is gross! I can’t sleep on the floor! There’s no electricity! No internet! No phone signal!” (Matthew 8:19-20).

Complacency makes all sorts of excuses for not following Jesus, and some of them seem appropriate and valid. But there are missionaries all around the world who have said yes to Jesus even though it meant leaving family responsibilities, saying goodbye to family, going into danger, eating disgusting food, sleeping on the floor, without electricity, internet or phone.

But Complacency is worse than that. Complacency doesn’t want to rock the boat by bringing Jesus into the school or the workplace. Complacency believes in the separation of church and state. Complacency won’t even talk about Jesus at parties with friends, for fear of offending someone.

Because of these attitudes, Jesus is no longer welcome in our schools or workplaces; Biblical Christianity has no say in lawmaking; and political correctness has become more important in American society than the salvation of souls. Those people that you’re so worried about offending need to hear the Good News that Jesus died for them. And the person you know with the hardest heart is someone who desperately needs Jesus.

Jesus was meek and gentle, and offensive to the people who rejected Him and His free offer of salvation. He never backed down from telling the truth. He is our Perfect Example, and like Him, we need to be ready to “offend” people with the truth. But to do that, we’ve got to step out of our comfort zone. We’ve got to give up comfortable Complacency. We’ve got to pick up our cross and follow Him, even when that leads us away from family and friends. And to do that we’ve got to trust God.

Here’s one last thought: Have you ever read the list of the people who are going to hell in Revelation 21:8? “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars —they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur.” Look who leads the list: not the murderers, not idolaters, but the cowardly! Many times throughout the Bible we are encouraged to be strong, bold, and courageous. Jesus said, “If anyone is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when He comes in His Father’s glory with the holy angels,” (Mark 8:38).